True Story: I'm hungry, it's dinner time, but no ingredients to really combine to make a solid meal. Sure I have various frozen things but since I have a pound of relatively fresh ground beef, I figured I'd cook something (preferably something without pasta in it because I eat too much of that). I discovered in the freezer that I had some puff pastry sheets and boy would some Beef Empañadas hit the spot. The recipe I found called for onions and mixed vegetables as well as beef gravy. All I could find was some turkey gravy, left over from last thanksgiving (but hey, the expiration isn't until Nov 2007, so I'm within my rights to still use it). After cracking open the can, I decided it tasted like, well, turkey gravy. So now what. Well, like that scene in National Treasure where the clues pop out of the paper, such did the following ingredients show themselves to me:
Worcestershire Sauce (shake many a droplet out liberally)
Minced Garlic and some powdered garlic (to your taste)
A good dollop or two of A1 steak sauce (which lasts a long time in your fridge)
Some leftover Ready-Made Steak Marinade (if you want it a little tangy)
One important note: since it's a ground beef dish, let the gravy simmer for a while with the ground beef. The beef flavor plus the rest of the ingredients tastes pretty good, and nobody is the wiser.
And if you have some peas and carrots and you want to throw those in because your house is better stocked and it's your wife that does the food shopping instead of you, then by all means, throw those in. For me, for tonight, it's just beef, sauce, and puff pastry.
Here's a real emapanada recipe from puffpastry.com:
http://www.puffpastry.com/printrecipe.aspx?recipeID=23981
Hmmm. That must've been where I saw the worcestershire sauce, but I added a lot more than a Tbsp. Well, it's miller time.
Good Eating!